Movie Review | 'The Settlers'; 'Close, Closed, Closure'

Opposing Views, Shared Agonies

By DAVE KEHR

Published: January 15, 2003

Two documentaries from the Israeli left, Ruth Walk's "Settlers" and Ram Loevy's "Close, Closed, Closure," open today at the Film Forum in the South Village, both dealing with the agonies of the occupied territories, but from very different points of view. "The Settlers" examines life in the West Bank from the perspective of Israeli settlers, while "Close, Closed, Closure" depicts the lives of Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip.

These are sober, literal-minded films, quite unlike Elia Suleiman's playful, stylized Palestinian film "Divine Intervention," which returns to New York theaters on Friday after being screened in October at the New York Film Festival. Where Mr. Suleiman's film uses invented imagery to evoke the paradoxes of existence in Jerusalem — including a fantasy sequence in which a helium balloon, painted with the avuncular features of the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat, floats over the Holy Land like a tiny, nagging sprite — these documentaries take an unembellished view of the facts at hand.

"The Settlers" is a distanced but not overtly unsympathetic portrait of several religious families living in Hebron, the West Bank city. Ms. Walk focuses mainly on the women who lead these strictly observant Jewish households, identifying her subjects by their first names and by how many children they have (Bracha, who looks as if she is barely into her 30's, is credited with 12 offspring).

Much of "The Settlers" was shot (on video) in 1999, before the latest outbreak of violence, and it depicts a tense but superficially quiet world, where children are packed off to religious schools, husbands go to work and women are left at home to clean, cook and contemplate the breathtaking panorama of the old city visible from their newly built homes. (One woman admires the view of a new university building, but prefers not to see the Arab districts nearby.)

Most of these new houses are actually mobile installations, which can be moved to stay out of the way of the archaeological digs that are spreading through this ancient city. For the settlers, the archaeological sites are also ideological weapons — by proving that modern Hebron was the site of the ancient city of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, they hope to establish the legitimacy of Jewish claims to the area.

The last section of the film flashes forward to 2001, after the outbreak of the most recent Palestinian intifada, or uprising. Bracha obligingly points out the bullet holes that mark her otherwise immaculate walls and then returns to her baking. As another young mother says, "You have to look after your own, and that's it."

The more overtly political film and one much more closely tied to the Palestinian viewpoint is "Close, Closed, Closure," set in the Gaza Strip, which Mr. Loevy, the director and narrator, identifies as a prison with one million inmates — the inmates being the Palestinians trapped within Gaza's fenced and guarded boundaries. The metaphor seems justified by Mr. Loevy's depiction of the border-crossing checkpoints between the Gaza Strip and the 1967 Israeli border, where diplomats are swept through but Palestinians are subjected to searches and harassment. One unfortunate truck driver displays a cargo ruined by the long delays at the border — crates full of soft, soggy ice-cream bars — a surreal image that is powerfully reminiscent of one of Mr. Suleiman's absurdist inventions in "Divine Intervention."

In his voice-over narration, Mr. Loevy occasionally criticizes the banality of his imagery — like the repeated visits to the Gaza home of a boy who lost his legs when Israeli soldiers did not allow his father to take him to a hospital in time — while acknowledging that clichés often become reality in times of conflict. With their depiction of stubbornness and willful incomprehension on both sides, neither of these films offers hope that that conflict will end anytime soon.

The freer and more sophisticated approach of "Divine Intervention" makes these traditional-minded documentaries look somewhat stodgy and old-fashioned by comparison, but both have a value as reportage that Mr. Suleiman's film does not pretend to have.

THE SETTLERS

Directed by Ruth Walk; in Hebrew, with English subtitles; director of photography, Ms. Walk; edited by Yael Perlov; produced by Noemi Schory and Liran Atzmor; released by First Run Features. Shown with "Close, Closed, Closure" at the Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, west of Sixth Avenue, South Village. Running time: 52 minutes. This film is not rated.

CLOSE, CLOSED, CLOSURE

Written, directed and narrated by Ram Loevy; in English, Hebrew and Arabic, with English subtitles; directors of photography, Gady Afriat, Nagib Abu-Gobain and Yuval Erez; released by First Run/Icarus Films. Shown with "The Settlers" at the Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, west of Sixth Avenue, South Village. Running time: 52 minutes. This film is not rated.